Parties a Hoot at UCLA’s Wildest Animal House Yet

Fraternity high jinks may be fading at UCLA, but the campus is still the scene of a different kind of wildlife.

This animal house involves two fluffy little great horned owls that have moved into a nest on a ledge at the old Anderson Graduate School of Management building, which is being vacated this week as the business types move to new quarters.

Unlike many human first-year students, these fledglings are kept under close watch by their parents.

The senior owls hang out in nearby trees when they are not swooping down for takeout meals of rodents and the occasional feral cat.

The owlets are about three weeks old, says Kathryn Rich, a bio-geography grad student who keeps her eye on them from a nearby building.

After a few more courses--Introduction to Aerodynamics, Theory and Practice of Airborne Rat-Catching, or perhaps a Hooting seminar--the youngsters should grow to their full size of about two feet and fly off on their own at three months of age.

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SON ALSO RISES: The Yaroslavsky dynasty may not be dead, no matter what election returns showed last week.

After voters decided that Barbara Yaroslavsky would not take the place of her husband, Zev, on the Los Angeles City Council, the couple’s son revealed his interest in public office.

But David Yaroslavsky has set his sights higher than his parents--he wants to be President.

“Thomas Jefferson is my idol,” he said with a grin.

“He wrote the Declaration of Independence.”

Maybe the kid has a chance.

He is only 13.

Think of the head start he can get on fund raising.

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SPEAKING OF ZEV: Who was the Los Angeles County supervisor who asked court officials to ban cameras from any retrial of O.J. Simpson? Zev Yaroslavsky.

And why? Cameras were the “single biggest factor in elongating the trial,” he said.

And furthermore, “the continuous televising of the proceedings clearly has shed more heat than light on the proceedings.”

This is the same Yaroslavsky who pushed for the Board of Supervisors to televise its own meetings soon after he took office.

“Most people don’t know what county government is,” he said after the first televised board session earlier this year. “Ignorance breeds suspicion and suspicion breeds a lack of support. . . . This is a good day for the county.”

So does he like cameras or not?

Spokesman Joel Bellman offered this response: TV cameras are good at board meetings because they show elected officials doing the public’s business; in criminal trials, only a few people are directly involved.

And how does Yaroslavsky know what heat or light Marcia Clark and Johnnie Cochran are shedding in the Simpson case? He’s a watcher.

“Zev knows of what he speaks regarding the O.J. trial,” Bellman said.